What Is the Compounding Error in Post-Boom Market Forecasts?
The compounding error is treating a market's boom-era peak as its new baseline and then applying a growth rate on top of it, which widens the gap between the forecast and reality with every year projected forward.
There is a specific trap in forecasting a market that has just been through a boom, and several of the largest Thailand cannabis projections walked straight into it.
How Does the Forecasting Error Actually Compound?
A forecast built during or just after a peak tends to treat that peak as the new baseline. It then applies a growth rate on top. If the peak was in fact a high water mark rather than a floor, the model is now compounding growth on a number that was already too high. Each year added to the projection widens the gap between the forecast and the market.
How Can You Test Any Long-Range CAGR Forecast?
This gives you a practical test for any long-range market number you are handed. Ask what year the base was set in, and what the market did after that year. If the base sits at a boom and the curve marches upward from there, treat the headline with real caution.
We rebuilt the trajectory from current conditions rather than from a past peak. The shape that produces is materially different from the confident upward lines still in circulation, and it changes how a serious entrant should think about timing.
Treating a boom-era peak as the new baseline and applying a growth rate on top of it, so each additional year of projection widens the gap between the forecast and the market.
Ask what year the base was set in and what the market did after that year. If the base sits at a boom and the curve marches upward from there, treat the headline with caution.
Yes. Several of the largest Thailand cannabis projections walked straight into this trap by treating the boom-era peak as a floor rather than a high point.
Rebuilding the trajectory from current conditions rather than from a past peak, which produces a materially different shape than the confident upward lines still in circulation.
This post gives you the argument. The full method, the figures, and the confidence ratings behind them are in the report. Read a free sample chapter, then decide.
Read the free sample →Three findings from the 2026 edition, free.
Of 8,636 expired dispensary licences, 1,339 renewed. The rest did not bother. That is not a market collapsing. That is a market taking out its own trash.
CertainFewer shops, higher revenue each. The closures removed storefronts, not revenue, because the shops that closed were earning almost nothing. Every desk model read the count and stopped.
LikelyA small minority of shops earn a disproportionate share of all revenue. The bottom half earns a fraction of it. Nobody else has measured this.
LikelyBuilt from 850+ dispensary visits across Thailand, 100+ dispensary owner and operator interviews, 30+ farm owner and operator interviews, and 400+ customer interviews across 40 nationalities. 101 pages. 23 chapters. Every chapter sourced, every figure confidence-tagged.